The use of surveillance technologies by legal authorities has intensified in recent years. As new data collection technologies expand into law enforcement spaces previously dominated by interpersonal interactions, questions emerge about whether the public will evaluate interpersonal and technologically mediated interactions with legal authorities in the same ways. In an analysis guided by procedural justice theory, we examine whether and how legal authorities’ use of decision-making technology affects public evaluations of an authority-subordinate interaction and its outcome in the context of airport border crossings. Using an experimental vignette design (N = 278), we varied whether an encounter between a traveller and border security “agent” that produced a secondary search was described as interpersonal (conducted by a human agent) or technologically mediated (conducted by a machine agent). We also varied the traveller’s group membership relative to the nation-state, describing the traveller as either born in the country in question and a member of the nation’s most common racial group (in-group) or not born in the country and a racial minority (out-group). Both encounter type and group membership independently affected perceptions of the interaction (procedural justice judgements) and its outcome (distributive justice judgments). Technologically mediated encounters improved perceptions of procedural and distributive justice. Further, procedural justice judgments mediated the relationship between encounter type and distributive justice, demonstrating how perceptions of interactions influence perceptions of the outcomes of those interactions. Out-group members were evaluated as having worse experiences across all measures. The findings underscore the importance of extending tests of procedural justice theory beyond interpersonal interactions to technologically mediated interactions.

中文翻译：

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程序正义问题和与法律当局的技术中介互动

近年来，法律当局对监控技术的使用有所加强。随着新的数据收集技术扩展到以前由人际互动主导的执法空间，公众是否会以同样的方式评估与法律当局的人际互动和技术中介互动的问题出现了。在以程序正义理论为指导的分析中，我们研究了法律当局对决策技术的使用是否以及如何影响对当局与下属互动及其在机场过境背景下的结果的公众评估。使用实验插图设计（N = 278），我们改变了旅行者与边境安全“特工”之间的相遇产生了二次搜索，是被描述为人际交往（由人类代理人进行）还是技术中介（由机器代理人进行）。我们还改变了旅行者相对于民族国家的群体成员身份，将旅行者描述为出生在相关国家并且是该国最常见的种族群体（群体内）的成员，或者不是出生在该国并且是少数族裔（组外）。遭遇类型和群体成员独立地影响对交互（程序正义判断）及其结果（分配正义判断）的看法。以技术为媒介的遭遇改善了对程序正义和分配正义的认识。更远，程序正义判断调解了遭遇类型和分配正义之间的关系，展示了对互动的看法如何影响对这些互动结果的看法。外群体成员被评估为在所有措施中都有更糟糕的经历。研究结果强调了将程序正义理论的测试从人际互动扩展到技术中介互动的重要性。